Mass Infect
by MelShep
Summary: After a mysterious incident aboard the Normandy, Shepard wakes up with no memory of the past year. Unfortunately there has been an outbreak of a strange virus on Omega, one which causes the dead to rise with a hunger for the living, and Commander Shepard is the only one the Council trust to find answers. But can Shepard and her crew survive the hordes of Infected?


**Hi guys, **

**I've hit a bit of a writers block with my old story, and haven't written anything at all in ages. So now I've got the summer to get back into writing, and I thought** **I'd start with something new (that I've been thinking about for a while). I love Zombie stories, and I love the Mass Effect universe, so this is my attempt to combine those two! It's an alternative universe, so try not to get hung up on things like "where are the Reapers?" (no where, they don't exist in my story!), and which characters are from which games etc. Anyone who's read my other stories knows that I like to change things up to make my stuff a bit different. **

**Anyway, I hope you like it! I've drafted out ideas for ten parts, so hopefully this should update regularly. It will feature many well-known ME characters, but bring them into this alternative universe, where Reapers aren't the problem!**

**Mel**

* * *

When Shepard woke up, she found she had no memories. She didn't know where she was. She didn't know who she was. And she didn't know why she was in so much pain.

Upon examining her body, she could at least solve that last question. She was on the floor of a small room, and as small pieces of memory began to return, she recognised the room as an escape pod: most likely ejected from a large ship. She was lying in an extremely uncomfortable position, and she was under the distinct impression that she had somehow been thrown from her seat, despite the fact that she would surely have been strapped in?

Shepard tried to remember something, anything. It was like trying to remember a dream, she felt it all slipping through her fingers. Her heart began to pound. She felt utterly lost and confused. Warily, as though her limbs were made of glass, Shepard sat up. The pain in her body took her mind off her confusion for the moment, and she took a couple of deep breaths. "Ok," she muttered to herself. "Where am I?" She looked around properly, for the first time. "Definitely an escape pod. Which means I was on a ship. Ok, that's good. Next question. What happened?" It was no use, she couldn't remember. She tried to focus on something she did know. "My name is Ellen Shepard. I'm a soldier with the Alliance. I serve under Captain Anderson. I grew up on Earth." All these little facts began to calm her down: she might not be able to remember how she got here, but at least she hadn't totally forgotten herself.

Now it was time to check out the damage. Shepard looked down at her body. She wasn't wearing her armour: simply a T-shirt and her black sweatpants. Her feet were bare. She didn't need her memories to know that this was the kind of thing she would only wear to sleep. So that meant that whatever happened was unexpected. She raised her arms slowly. They were sore, and covered in blood, but she could move them. The same went for her legs, so she decided it was time to get up.

She went slowly, waiting for the tell-tale crack of a broken limb, but luckily there was nothing. Her dark hair was also matted with blood, but her head didn't seem to be bleeding, so it must've come from somewhere else. Shepard edged to the door of the pod, which was ajar, and pushed it open. She was more than a little surprised to find herself in a more familiar setting than she expected: the docking bay of a ship. It wasn't a ship she recognised, and she was relieved to find that she remembered serving on a number of ships. This one was definitely new. She turned to look back at the pod, it looked pretty bashed up: there had definitely been a bad landing. Shepard was able to speculate that for one reason or another she had needed to abandon whatever ship she was on, and the escape pod had crashed on the surface of the nearest planet. The ship she was on now would've been sent to retrieve the pod.

There was something that was a little worrying about that, however. Where were the crew? Not only was she alone in the pod, something which was highly unorthodox (those pods could hold ten comfortably), but there was no one here to meet her. If this ship had been sent to rescue her, where was everyone?

* * *

It was at that point that Shepard truly looked at her strange surroundings. The dock was a mess. Papers and tools littered the floor, and the whole place looked as though everyone had left in a great hurry. And what were those marks on the door? Her feet tapping quietly on the cold floor, Shepard moved to the other side of the room. What was unmistakeably blood, was smeared across the door handle, and there was a small puddle on the floor by her foot.

"What happened here?" Shepard asked herself quietly.

Trying to avoid the blood, Shepard opened the door and looked into the long corridor beyond. More blood, more mess, and now there were bodies. Shepard quickly moved down the corridor towards the two figures, but upon turning them over, found that both of them had received a single bullet to the head. She stood up slowly. Perhaps this was not the rescue ship at all. Was this a Batarian Pirate ship? She didn't recognise the bodies on the floor, but she didn't really remember anything: maybe these people had been in the pod with her? Were they killed when they went for help?

Shepard wished she had her gun, but slowly continued on towards the elevator at the end of the hall. It arrived moments after she pushed the button, and inside she found two more bodies, again, with shots to their heads. One wasn't so clean, and half of the man's cheek had come off with it. Shepard had a strong stomach, but still looked away quickly. The doors opened on the command deck, which was as quiet as the others. It also shared the same ransacked look: as though there had been a riot or a fight recently. More blood, this time spattered onto the walls. Shepard reached out with her hand: still wet. This had happened recently.

She heard something. A noise was coming from a room to her right. The sign on the door read 'Med Bay'. Perhaps she would find answers inside? As she made her way towards the door Shepard couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible was about to happen. She took another breath, berating herself for scaring so easily. After pushing the button the door to the med bay slid open silently. Standing about twenty feet away, with his back to her, was a Doctor leaning over the examination table. He appeared to be treating a female patient who was lying upon it. From this distance Shepard could see that the woman was either unconscious or dead.

"Excuse me," Shepard began. The Doctor turned. What happened next took place over a matter of seconds, yet in that time Shepard saw a great deal. She saw that the woman on the table had been ripped open from the waist, and that her insides had been removed. She saw that the Doctor was covered in blood, particularly around his hands and mouth. She saw that his eyes had become mere whites, yet managed to convey a murderous look. She saw that he meant to kill her.

The Doctor ran towards Shepard. She grabbed the nearest thing she could find: a surgical knife, and as his hands found her neck she plunged it into his forehead. She had just the time to see the flesh caught between his teeth, before he fell to the ground.

Shepard dropped down with him, unwilling to let go of the knife, and unsure if her legs would hold her even if she did. Her breathing was uneasy, and she tried to calm herself down. She had killed before, many times. Why did this feel so different? Because he was unarmed? Because she did not give him the chance to speak? No, she knew it was something else. This was different. This man had looked at her with the most animalistic of expressions, and she didn't like to think about what he was going to do.

At that moment Shepard was aware of movement at the other side of the room. The woman who had been laying on the table was now standing up. Shepard felt her jaw drop open as she watched blood and what was left of the woman's vital organs pour out onto the floor. How was she standing up? The woman's skin was grey and mottled, and her eyes, like the Doctor's, were white and murderous. She opened her mouth, and screeched as she ran towards Shepard. The sound stirred Shepard to life, and she jumped to her feet, running from the room. The door did not shut behind her, and she could hear the sound of the woman at her heels.

Shepard ran for the elevator and the doors opened immediately. Once inside she slammed the button with her fist, and the doors slowly began to shut. "Come on!" She cried, and they closed just before the woman reached them. Shepard exhaled loudly, leaning back on the cold wall. Beads of perspiration ran down her face and neck, and her shirt was damp against her skin.

* * *

_What's happening? Is this real? _

DING.

The elevator doors opened, and Shepard almost screamed again. Just outside were three more people, all crouched around a forth. There was no denying it now, she could see they were eating him: ripping off chunks of his skin with their teeth. Shepard eased along the wall towards the panel, trying not to make a sound or any sudden movements. She stretched out her fingers and pushed the nearest button she could find, not taking her eyes off the group.

An alarm rang out. She had pushed the alarm button! "Fuck!" Shepard couldn't help but cry out in frustration, as the three people jumped up. Shepard saw the fire extinguisher on the wall of the elevator and grabbed it, before smashing it down on the head of the first man, He fell dead, his blood pooling around her feet. She shoved the other two men back, quickly pushing the buttons on the elevator panel again. The doors closed and the metal box began to move. Shepard held the heavy extinguisher tightly in her arms. She could see that she was heading back to the docking bay.

When the doors opened again she raised her weapon.

"Shepard?"

Shepard dropped the extinguisher. "Anderson!" Her Captain threw his arms around her, something which he had never done before (because it wasn't something that a captain did to their second in command), but which Shepard needed. He led her out of the elevator, and she saw at least fifty Alliance soldiers waiting at the end of the corridor.

"Are you ok?" Anderson asked, putting a blanket around her and leading her towards the docking bay. His tone was fatherly, and his eyes widened at the sight of the blood on her arms. She nodded. Then shook her head. As they reached the docking bay, Anderson seemed to be leading her towards a shuttle, but five men in white bio-suits cut them off. She felt Anderson's grip on her tighten. "She's fine," Anderson said, his voice full of authority. That was the voice he used when his decision was absolute, and no one ever argued with that.

But these men did. "We have our orders sir," one of them replied simply. Shepard didn't like bio-suits, you couldn't see the faces of the people inside, and their voices were always distorted by the equipment. Two of the men took hold of her arms, and led her away. Shepard looked back to Anderson. She could see he wanted to intervene, but he didn't. He nodded in a reassuring way. Shepard was scared, she didn't know what any of this meant, but she was a good soldier, so she did what she was told.

They took her in a private shuttle to an Alliance ship, and frogmarched her to the med bay. It was larger than any med bay on any ship she'd been on. Once there, they immediately stripped her of her clothes. They answered none of her questions, and simply gave short orders such as "Walk to the shower. Arms up. Turn around." Shepard felt very exposed. As a soldier she wasn't exactly modest, but this wasn't like the showers during training, or the times her squad had to clean off in a river during a long mission. It felt like everybody's eyes were on her, pouring over her body.

The water was icy cold, and she could smell disinfectant. The blood washed off her arms, and Shepard finally saw the extent of her scars. But these weren't the right shape to be caused in an escape pod crash.

"That's confirmed," she heard one of the men say into his radio.

"What?" Anderson's voice.

"I said it's confirmed. Commander Shepard has been bitten."

Shepard looked at her arms. Yes, they were bite marks. But, bitten by what?

Anderson's voice again. "Do not kill Shepard, I repeat, do not kill Shepard until I've seen her."

Shepard looked up from her arms to find all five men had their guns trained on her.


End file.
